Day 36: Alien 3 (1992)

A movie infamous for its budget troubles, script problems, and control issues. I know it as the only rotten film on David Fincher's Rotten Tomatoes directing filmography. How could this be?

Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Charles Dance, Pete Postlethwaite
Directed By: David Fincher (Who happens to be my favorite director of all-time.)

The Positives:

- I've seen enough of the Alien franchise to know that in space no one wears a bra.

- I like it when children die in movies. It's a morbid thing to admit but I think it's a ballsy move on the storytellers behalf.

- The splicing of two scenes together at a time felt like a real effective narrative method. Ex. The credits and the ship crashing or the funeral and the alien bursting from the dog's chest.

- It's beautifully shot. Even the muted colors in the film are gorgeous. It's rare to see a movie with a yellow color scheme and it sets this flick apart from other sci-fi flicks.

- I love my action/horror movies romance-less. No better way of curing that than to kill the potential love interest off early.

- There's a certain David Fincher-esque quality about this film that I really enjoyed. You can tell this is one of his pictures and that he really wanted to tell a dark and twisted story. However, it's clear to see where this went wrong: Handing a virgin director a quality franchise that came with a great deal of studio interference is naturally a bad idea. Especially a director as cold and emotional as Mr. Fincher.

The Negatives:

- Even though I've seen both Alien films that precede this (and remember enjoying them immensely), it hasn't really been a franchise I've kept up to date with. At best I am familiar with two of the characters (Newt and Ripley) and I remember vague details about both films (though I can't really place in which movie they belong). Alien 3 doesn't help with this at all. It just throws you in the middle of the action and hopes you know enough to keep up.

- I actually believe that "throwing an alien into a maximum security prison and watch what happens" is a great concept, yet the execution feels bogged down with exposition.

- The performances, especially the inmates, were hit or miss.

- Some of the effects are obviously models or piss poorly rendered CGI and have an extremely distracting vibe to them.

- All of the inmates looked practically the same and it made it very difficult to identify with them. I could've sworn Pete Postlethwaite died on three separate occasions.

- I don't know if it is the transfer on my DVD or if the movie was actually released like this, but I'm afraid 'Alien 3' is another flick where the sound effects are much, much louder than the dialogue.

- Even though the run times comes in at a little under two hours, the film seems to drag on a bit too long.

- The movie was almost completely void of suspense since the characters fell into the "Don't do that stupid!" category. Ya know, the cliche concept of yelling at your screen in frustration because the characters are so stupid they go against natural human instinct, practically saying "Oh, there's a monster down this hole? Let me stick my head it to take a gander." and your only response is "Don't do that stupid!"

Grade: C-

Maybe it's the David Fincher fan boy in me but I actually didn't find 'Alien 3' nearly as atrocious as the internet wants me to believe it is. While it's in no way a good film, it still kept me entertained for a couple of hours. I'm sure there's enough slaps in the face to the franchise's die hard fans to keep them from enjoying it but to the casual viewer this is nothing more than your average sci-fi fodder.